Interesting. From childhood on up, I've always been fascinated with games, including playing cards and card games— accumulated a large playing card collection, and several shelves full of books about cards and other games— that included tarot cards, though I was interested in them in the overall context of card games and their history, and not for their fortune-telling use.

I remember one time when I was 12 or 13, in a department store in Chicago (what were we doing in Chicago?), checking to see if they had any tarot decks in their game department, and delivering to the sales clerk a lengthy and technical explanatory lecture on the different varieties of tarot decks— I believe for some reason I was looking in particular for a Florentine minchiate deck. I remember she was having a hard time keeping a straight face.

As for the divinatory use of tarot cards, I agree with you Dean, I don't think there's anything magical about it. Though I suspect that the disciplined use of a structured set of symbols may help the mind to access and integrate all sorts of subtle sensory cues which we've picked up on, and which are ordinarily "in one ear and out the other," or at least "out of sight, in the mind." I'm thinking of something like the notions of "low-focus thinking" and "affect linking" which David Gelernter explores in his book The Muse in the Machine: Computerizing the Poetry of Human Thought. This goes a bit beyond simple cold reading, though it could in principle be studied by psychologists in a strictly scientific fashion.

Much of the information given in the one serious reading I got could has been channeled observation, but not the fact that in seven years the woman I was about to meet and I would have a "bambino".

Oh, by the way, if I was acting to fulfill the prophecy, it was pretty subtle, in that Emrack was in fact the consequence of a contraceptive failure.

One of the things that's been repeatedly noticed is that people tend to fail to remember specific predictions that don't come true, but remember the ones that do. It's not stupidity, either, it's just a normal human trait.

The only real way to test these things is write all the predictions down verbatim at the time they are made, then check back periodically to see how many of them actually work.

Not dismissing your experience, just pointing it out.

I'm fascinated by this topic, rather more for the questions it raises than for the answers that are readily available.

I definitely think that most psychics (definitely ALL psychic hotlines) are a fraud. I tend to disregard fortunetellers also. I don't spend hours obsessing about ghost-stories.

But, I think there are connections that aren't necessarily physical. Perhaps they are spiritual, or emotional, or psychological, or something else.

I have cousins that are twins. When they were teenagers, for the day they were in separate locations about 40 miles apart. One was accidentially set on fire. The other one completely freaked out. There are numerous stories about twins being "connected". What if what connects them is present in all of us?

Another question raised by the Tarot: are the "answers" coming from the persons sub-consious or from the readers mind or from a supernatural power? (Note: if you can believe in God, why would you have a hard time believing in Satan?) Many people believe the supernatural will communicate with us, or they wouldn't be praying to God (and expecting him to answer their prayers).

I think of the tarot deck as a focus device. The best spreads, in that view, are those that focus on where you are and get you thinking about where you should go. For example, if you're in a rut, and someone does a reading for you where they talk you through the 'where you are' cards, and you start thinking about them in such a way that you *realize* you're in a rut, then you talk with the reader and ask about what the 'future' cards mean... well, I'm just saying, that you start thinking about yourself, and self-examination is sadly underrated in today's world.

I am planning a tarot deck of my own, based on contemporary fantasy. This is what comes of working in a bookstore and wanting to recommend good books to everyone...

B. Durbin:

If I'm understanding you correctly, I think you and I would be on about the same wavelength on this question. I myself would suspect that tarot cards (or any other structured set of symbols used in a disciplined manner) may not only motivate a person to self-examination— but may facilitate or even catalyze that process of self-examination— in ways which would be possible, but perhaps much more difficult, without the catalyst.

Each of us has within him a wealth of experiences, insights, and things perceived but not really consciously noticed, which can be integrated and brought to conscious awareness— though that's often far easier said than done.

It's a simple anthropological fact that various systems of divination are widely used in cultures around the world. I don't believe that there is anything magical or supernatural about them. But neither do I really think that they all simply amount to self-deception, cold readings, or telling the mark what he wants to hear: in some cases, yes, no doubt, but I hardly think that's the whole story. Abusus non tollit usum: and I'm one of those odd characters who has always found it hard to credit the notion that any widespread human custom is all abuse and no valid use.

I'm trying to think which psychiatrist it was that I once read, who told of some parents who brought their daughter to him. They were worried that there was something wrong with her, because she would sit in her room and simply stare at the blank wall, sometimes for half an hour at a stretch. This psychiatrist, who was wiser than some, said, "Congratulations, your daughter has joined the company of those mystics down through the ages who practiced the art of meditation. We'd all be better off if we could spend half an hour a day staring at a blank wall."

And I say all this as someone whose interest in tarot cards has never extended beyond their place in the history of playing cards and card games.

The night of the original Batman Premiere, i pulled out a pack of cards to entertain some of my high school friends.

I had just finished reading Piers Anthony's Tarot, so had basic command of the images and verbiage of Tarot reading. Or at least enough to convince high school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors.

Using an ordinary pack of cards, I cold-read an audience of 12 and "accurately" unearthed a "previously unknown" love triangle between a woman there and her current and former boyfriend.

I had no formal training - but it's pretty easy to make something up when you have two Jacks and the Queen of Hearts showing.

The trick is to use thirty some cards, put down intricate patterns, and occasionally disagree when someone tries to tell you something.

Tarot. heh. Don't people know that the original had 100 cards and you need 100 to get the magic of the arithmetic to work correctly?